Vortex

From now on, the Second, still bogged down in the mountains west of

Mozambique, would confine its operations to raids and noisy feints designed only to pin down the South African troops facing it-not to gain ground. The real push, Cuba’s final offensive, would come from the north.

He looked up.

“Inform all commanders, Colonel. We attack again at oh four hundred hours on the twenty-second. “

Gen. Antonio Vega would give his enemies another twenty four hours to weaken their formidable defenses.

TRANSVAAL COMMANDO “GOETKE,” THORN DALE

ON NATIONAL ROUTE ONE

Generations of hardworking Afrikaner farmers and cattle ranchers had known

Thomdale as simply “the town—as the closest center of commerce and culture. But the small collection of houses and shops had slowly been withering on the vine for years. Business and people alike were drifting southward to booming Pietersburg, forty kilometers away along the new NI superhighway. By the time of the Cuban invasion, there were only two generations in Thomdale’s tiny white population-the very young and the very old. Almost everyone else had gone, lured away by the opportunities and excitement of South Africa’s big cities.

Like many small towns in similar circumstances, Thomdate had been dying a slow, inexorable, and almost painless death. Then the Cubans had come.

At first, the invasion had been more a matter of inconvenience than of terror. Of day or night curfews imposed while

armored columns roared past on the highway. Of newly paved streets and fertile fields crushed by tank treads. Of growing shortages and increasing humiliation.

All that had changed when Castro’s rear echelon and support troops arrived. They’d rolled through Thomdale like mechanized locusts on the march-stealing food, looting shops, and terrorizing those who’d stayed behind to watch over homes and farms.

Most of the men were already gone, off on commando harassing Cuban supply lines and killing isolated stragglers. Much of the rest of the white population had fled into the countryside with them rather than risk the tender mercies of their enemies.

They’d been right to flee. The local commando was too good at its job, and the Cubans had decided to make their friends and families pay in blood for their success.

One night, in reprisal for what they called “acts of terrorism,” three batteries of Cuban artillery shelled the town with poison gas and white phosphorus. Five minutes of wholesale, indiscriminate slaughter had turned Thomdale’s wood and brick buildings into fire-blackened shells filled with horror.

Now fourteen-year-old Jaime Steers lay silently in the burnt-out ruins of his own home and watched the campfires lit by enemy soldiers. He’d lain there for hours, hidden behind a pile of rubble and covered by a sheet of black plastic. Despite the darkness he could see moving shapes and occasionally, faces illuminated by the fires.

The Cuban supply convoy was camped in what had once been the town’s main square. Ten trucks escorted by almost as many armored cars and personnel carriers had driven into Thomdale just before dark. Ibe ruined town made a good resting place after the wearying, day-long journey from Cuba’s main supply depot at Bulawayo-deep inside Zimbabwe. And this was the fourth convoy in as many days to laager there.

The Boer commando led by Erasmus Goetke planned to make them pay dearly for their lodging.

In more peaceful times, Goetke had been a prosperous farmer, a lean, wiry man who many said could coax wheat out of dry sand.

When the Cubans burned his farm and stole his crops, he had sworn a solemn oath to destroy this newest enemy of his people. He was a religious man, well versed in his Afrikaans Bible, and his rage was of biblical proportions.

So Goetke had gathered not only his commando, but every man and boy old enough to carry a gun. Their women were spies and messengers. Children too young to fight hid in the hills with their grandmothers and listened to stories of other battles. But Jaime Steers was just old enough to play an active role in this act of vengeance.

It was his birthright. A remembrance of deadly struggles against powerful enemies was etched deep in the heart of every Boer. All of Afrikaner history had been a story of bullheaded perseverance-against the elements, the Zulus, the British, world opinion, and now the Cubans. With a tradition of resistance, they bounced back from hardship and tragedy like steel springs.

Jaime kept his eyes glued to the binoculars his father had given him-studying the men Commandant Goetke had promised would die.

The Cubans moved confidently, strutting through the twisted wreckage left by their incendiary shells. Most squatted around the campfires, heating rations or brewing coffee. Several amused themselves by urinating on a mass grave dug for those who’d died in the bombardment.